Tag Archives: Yorkshire

I know lots of you love seeing old family photos, so here’s one of my family taken in 1953: my father Robert, my mother Dorothy, my big sister and that’s me as a toddler. I don’t know where it was taken, apart from somewhere in Leeds.

Today I had a lovely long and chatty lunch with a relative I haven’t seen since I was a young girl so we had much to catch up on. Amidst the family story swap we shared old photos we’d inherited, so at long last I have a photo of my great grandfather Joseph Green. Here he is, with my great grandmother Charlotte Green nee Senior. Joseph died in 1925 at the age of 57, so this must have been taken not long before he died. He died of cancer and, looking at the photo, I wonder if this was taken when he was already ill. The location is a mystery as it’s not familiar to me but is most likely to have been taken in Leeds.

7 April 1884
John Edward Burton, first cousin three times removed, was born at Stanley, Yorkshire and lived at Alverthorpe. Thanks to digital images of most West Yorkshire CofE baptism, marriage and burial records now being online, as well as the census up until 1911, it’s been relatively easy to track down my Yorkshire born ancestors’s relatives. John worked in a mineral water bottling works and then a brewery before he married in 1912.

7 April 1893
Birth of Mary Ann Eliza Michael at Boddom, Aberdeenshire, daughter of my great great aunt Mary Ann Fraser and David Ewan Michael. Mary Ann’s family lived for a time, when she was a child, at Wickersgill near Shap in Westmoreland, England, where her father David was working as a granite quarry foreman, but by 1911 they were living at Little Tillyland in Cruden parish and Mary Ann was a 17 year old dressmaker. She married Thirlow Hill in 1912, who was also a granite quarrier, and had several children. When she died in 1956 they were living back in Boddam. That her family spent time living near Shap gives me a lovely little coincidence, as I’ve driven through Shap several times on my way to a holiday cottage to stay with friends for a Lake District walking weekend. At the time I didn’t know I had Scottish ancestors who used to live close by.

I love this photo, sent to me by my second cousin, of some of my Yorkshire ancestors. The only problem is that neither of us knows who everyone is! But we can date it by who we do know.

Just in case anyone doesn’t realise, you can see a much larger version of a blog pic by clicking on it.)

On the far right, seated with the baby girl on her lap, is my great grandmother Charlotte Green nee Senior. The little blonde haired boy to her left is her eldest son Willie, in the middle at the front is her second child Edward, and on her lap is her daughter Alice. As Alice was born in January 1893 and is just a few months old when the photo was taken, this gives it a date. (Alice also looks startlingly how I look in my baby photos!)

So trying to work out who everyone else could be, I studied my family tree to pinpoint the elderly couple. Thinking they could well be Charlotte’s grandparents, the question became – did she have any grandparents who were both still alive in 1893? The answer is she did: her mother’s parents, George Simpson and his wife Charlotte nee Haigh. In 1893 they would have been 82 and 76 respectively, and the couple in the photograph are certainly old.

In the 1891 census George and Charlotte Simpson were living at The Green, Royston (north of Barnsley). Also living at The Green in Royston in 1891 were Edward Senior and his wife Mary nee Simpson, Charlotte’s parents. So was the photo taken near where they lived in Royston? Someone has clearly taken their best chairs outside!

So – some other guesses. The woman at the back, with her hands on the chair, could be Mary Senior nee Simpson. And is the man standing next to her husband Edward Senior?Are the other people Edward and Mary’s children and grandchildren? Studying their ages in 1893, they do seem to fit.

If what I’ve worked out is true, this is a photo of my great grandmother, my great great grandparents, and my great great great grandparents. Plus assorted great and great great aunts and uncles. How I wish I could find out for sure!

I do love the clothes they’re all wearing. They’re obviously in their Sunday best, and given that it would have been taken late spring/early summer (given the age of baby Alice), it’s possible it was taken on Whitsunday, when it was traditional to wear your very newest and best clothes. Though I can’t help shuddering at how much work was involved in washing and ironing those baby clothes!

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